The Waite–Smith Deck
The Empress
The garden at its fullest — the card of growing things.
- Work
- from the 1909 Waite–Smith deck
- Plate
- Major Arcana · Key 3
- Maker
- Pamela Colman Smith, for A. E. Waite
- Date
- 1909
- Source
- Published London, 1909 · scan: Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source plate — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
A crowned figure reclines among ripening wheat, a heart-shaped shield beside her marked with the sign of Venus, a river falling through the wood behind. Pamela Colman Smith painted her in 1909 as ripeness made visible — the garden at its fullest, the card of growing things. Smith, an illustrator and folklorist with a theatrical eye, gave the whole deck this sense of scene and season, and did it in a few months for a flat fee. The credit went elsewhere for a hundred years. Look for the twelve stars in her crown and the 'PCS' monogram low in the frame.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Empress printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate — from the 1909 Waite–Smith deck (1909), held by Published London, 1909 · scan: Wikimedia Commons. The work was published before 1931 and is centuries out of copyright.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper; framed pieces sit behind acrylic, no mat.
- Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
- Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
- If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.
Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans available, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the emblem line, the letterpress bite, the registration of colour — on stock made to outlive its owner.
From the same hand
